Recent years have witnessed an increasing awareness of the importance of proper dress and attire. The result is that people are now dressing better than they have in the past, and making the proper impression requires and even more critical selection of clothes and accessories with sensitivity to the subtle effect of such things as color, the formality of the apparel and so forth.
In the case of clothing, this presents a relatively minor problem, inasmuch as garments have a relatively short lifespan and are relatively inexpensive to purchase. Thus, a person may own a wardrobe including casual clothes, formal clothes, working clothes, and sports outfits.
In contrast, accessories in general, and jewelry in particular are very expensive but have a long lifespan. Jewelry is thus particularly sensitive to changes in style or any need for a diverse collection of pieces. Being properly dressed requires that the jewelry a person wears be as tailored and diverse as the other parts of one's wardrobe. Oftentimes, the expense associated with such a diverse collection of jewelry is prohibitive to the individual.
One part of the solution to this problem which appears in the prior art is an item of jewelry which has removable and selectable decorative elements. For example, earrings have been designed which comprise a conventional clip and a base which is adapted to receive a decorative plastic object which has structure which engages the earring. This earring is advantageous inasmuch as it allows the wearer to select an earring design whose color goes along with the color of the outfit that one is wearing. It is also advantageous because an earring with a plurality of substitutable elements is far less expensive than a plurality of individual earrings.
Nevertheless, this sort of multi-element earring does suffer from a number of disadvantages. These disadvantages include a number of problems associated with the structure of conventional earrings as well as limitations in the adaptability of such multi-element earrings. For example, conventional earrings for unpierced ears must apply a relatively high level of pressure to the earlobe in order to be secured to the ear. This causes the wearer a degree of discomfort and necessitates that the earrings cannot be worn for extended periods of time. Nevertheless, such earrings still have a tendency to fall off the ear of a wearer, oftentimes without notice.
Conventional earrings which are made for use by individuals who have pierced ears suffer from similar problems. The elements securing the earrings to the earlobe are likely to apply pressure during use, and to slip or snap off after extended periods of use. Still yet another disadvantage is the fact that if, for some reason, excess pressure is applied to the earring, the earring is likely to cause injury to the ear of the user.
In addition, earrings for use on pierced ears add the complication of a possibility of infection. For example, after an ear has been freshly pierced, the individual must wear an earring, in order to stop the ear hole from healing closed. Unfortunately, the presence of the earring pin prevents an applied antiseptic from going into the newly pierced ear. It is also believed that even after the ear has been successfully pierced and properly healed, the fact that no air is allowed into the hole by the pin encourages infection within the ear hole.